High school partners with nonprofit to reduce school’s waste

COLUMBIA, S.C. — EngenuitySC is taking its relationship with Lower Richland High School to the next level with the launch of a new program to reduce the school’s waste while teaching students about science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The nonprofit initiated the LifeCycle Innovation Project, a three-phase process that takes food waste from lunches and turns it into high-quality compost for use in the school’s greenhouse.

“At Lower Richland High School, our team is passionate about exposing students to STEM career opportunities in the region,” said EngenuitySC Executive Director Meghan Hughes Hickman. “The goal is to help students forge career paths that can meet our future workforce needs here in the Midlands of South Carolina.”

Students from Lower Richland’s STEM Academy gather leftover food and place it in a 2,200-pound food waste dehydrator, which spends up to eight hours processing the waste to create an odorless, coffee ground-like material. The students weigh and record the amount of food processed.

The material then is taken to a vermiculture room, where it is placed inside pods containing approximately 20 pounds of red worms. The worms break the material down into worm castings — a natural fertilizer — to create compost.

The students will use the compost in their on-site solar-powered greenhouse to plant poinsettias for school fundraisers and to grow vegetables like tomatoes for the culinary students. EngenuitySC acquired a $25,000 Palmetto Energy grant to obtain a 30-panel solar array.

The panels will produce energy for Lower Richland’s greenhouse as we as donate excess energy back into the power grid, giving the school a credit to offset its energy costs.

An average of 200 pounds of waste has been collected and processed in the past two weeks to create 80 pounds of compost. The LifeCycle program is expected to reduce the school’s food waste up to 70 percent.

EngenuitySC initiated the LifeCycle in June 2014 and spent the rest of the year developing the project. Installation of the dehydrator, solar array vermiculture system and solar panels began in January. The project totals $142,361, from a number or partnership grants. Nearly 30 students from Lower Richland’s STEM Academy have participated in the program, volunteering about 130 hours that go toward school credit.